The Democracy Phantasy
Lately, I find myself choking on my own tongue when I see and hear comments about how important it is to “save our democracy”. I also ask myself, what democracy is it we are supposed to save? Are we referring to the phantasy we all share about American democracy?
These thoughts have motivated me to research and study exactly what democracy is and should be. That led me on a reading journey all the way back to Plato. I know all of you already know this, but I will quote him here so you can see I know it also.
There is questionable quote attributed to Plato that democracy probably could not work when the participating population reached and exceeded 20,000 people. That sounds strangely arbitrary until one takes into account how he arrived at that number. I have not been able to verify he actually said exactly that, but there is an inference in that statement that should be acknowledged.
According to the lore, Greek citizens gathered on the side of a hill to discuss and debate the issues of the day. Anyone who wanted to participate was welcome. The hill could accommodate about 20,000 people. When the crowd grew larger than that, it became increasingly difficult for the discourse to remain “democratic” and possible for everyone to participate equally. This is a parable worth pondering even if it is not verifiable as fact. Further, it is recorded that Plato hated the concept of democracy and believed that only well trained and qualified individuals should be allowed to be rulers of the people.
For many decades, Americans have displayed a lack of faith and interest in the entire concept of democratic elections. Regardless of political stump proclamations about the value and importance of this method of selecting leaders, barely half of the eligible voting population even bother to participate. America is number one in the world for poor voter turnout for a principle that is supposedly held in high regard.
As one shameful example of how such low participation can distort election outcomes, consider the election of George H.W. Bush in 1988. He was placed in the White House by approximately 18% of the American population. This number is arrived at by comparing the total votes cast for him to the total population at that time. I am referring to total population as compared to eligible voting population. But that does not change the reality that our system of elections can place an individual into the most powerful job in the world by less than one fifth of the people.
Then, there is the matter of how our founding fathers perceived the concept of self rule by the growing population of America. All of the demographic population of Americans who stole this country fair and square from the indigenous peoples who had lived here for millennia, otherwise know as immigrants, would almost populate Houston, Texas at the time of creating our constitution.
As the founders pondered how the structure of democracy should be formed, they struggled with a very important problem. How would they protect slave owners (which included themselves to some extent) from possible future laws passed by the people that could lead to having to give up the possession of human assets? And then there was the matter of the ignorant and undereducated masses who would be given the power to pass laws, make arbitrary rules and even elect presidents. They realized this could be fatal to their aristocratic status and livelihood.
Something must be done! Eureka! Enter the Electoral College! What a great oxymoron! Well-chosen oxymorons can be very powerful, we now know. There is little “electoral” and nothing particularly “collegial” about this carefully selected group of mostly invisible individuals who have the power to nullify the people’s choice if they believe they have good reason to do so.
I believe it is pure folly to claim America is a true democracy when there is the existence of a small group of individuals such as the electoral college who have the power to overrule the people’s will. We have had three presidential elections so far this century that disregarded the people’s will and placed losers in the office of the president. And all of them represented the same political faction. That should be alarming to anyone with a spine.
No other nation on the planet has an active and established democratic form of governance that resembles the American electoral college.
As if the electoral college were not problematic enough, another means of knee-capping democracy emerged in Massachusetts in 1812. It is still thriving as a means of rigging elections at the district level in every state. We euphimistically call it gerrymandering. The party in power in any state can use this political manipulation tool to draw voting district boundaries to favor their candidate.
Guess what? It works almost perfectly every election, unless the candidate is such a known scoundrel they could not get their own family to vote for them. That is rare, however, because scoundrels running for office has become very common. Another notch in the belt for subverting democracy.
Did the founding fathers have any clue that they were planting the seeds for the future potential of an autocratic form of rule? We will never know for certain if they did, but that is in fact exactly what they did. And ever since we have been inching closer to the edge of an autocratic precipice with each election cycle.
The Congress has the power and authority to end to the existence of the electoral college. But that would require having a spine. I challenge you to name a single member of either house, and including the White House, who has that much spine. And that is where we are today.
Historians can draw lines that connect to dots to clearly illustrate how we have come to be in this circumstance. I would like to see more of them do so. I don’t know if that might make any difference, but it is time to loudly proclaim, “I told you so!”
